Salami Slicing

A technique employed successfully by criminally inclined IT staff to acquire large sums of money, by means of very small amounts. Essentially it needs something like a Foreign Exchange business environment where there are large numbers of transactions involving more than 2 decimal places. As currencies, generally, only use two places decimals beyond this point are rounded off. Salami Slicing programs will always round down the amount, and transfer the additional places to a separate, hidden account which has a balance accumulating, over time, to a significant figure; multi-million dollar sums have been involved. This approach can only really work with systems handling huge numbers of transactions and where the amounts will not be noticed.

Very difficult to spot, and usually only comes to light (if at all) when the individuals involved leave the organisation, or are observed to be living well beyond their salary levels with no visible other means of support.